Anders Breivik and the Rise of Islamophobia

In late July 2011, Norway was struck by the worst terror attacks in its history. In a fertilizer-bomb attack on Government Headquarters in Oslo and a one-hour-long shooting spree at the Labour Party Youth Camp at Utoya, seventy-seven people, mostly teenagers, were killed by Anders Behring Breivik. By targeting young future social democratic leaders, his actions were meant to lead to the downfall of Europe's purportedly multiculturalist elites, thus removing an obstacle to his plans for an ethnic cleansing of Muslims from Europe. In Anders Breivik and the Rise of Islamophobia, leading Norwegian social anthropologist Sindre Bangstad reveals how Breivik's beliefs were the result not simply of a deranged mind but of the political mainstreaming of pernicious racist and Islamophobic discourses. These ideas, currently gaining common currency, threaten equal rights to dignity, citizenship and democratic participation for minorities throughout contemporary Europe. This is an authoritative account of the Norwegian terror attacks and the neo-racist discourse that motivated them.